365 beers in 365 days

Honest to God, I think I must have left my brain behind in Melbourne (possibly with the Tuatara Double Trouble – which it turns out was 10.5%!) because once again I’ve stuffed up the blogging order.

So while the last post was about a beer I drank on the way back from Australia, please excuse the fact that we are now back in Melbourne, the night before I left.

This beer was completely unremarkable, however the restaurant I had it at was incredibly good. Melbournians (or whatever it is you call yourselves), if you haven’t already been then get thee to i caruzi pizza in St Kilda and have yourself some Sicilian pizza. I thought I had already eaten the best pizza in the world (last year I made an offal pizza with lamb hearts, kidneys, liver, sage and bacon), but it turns out, this was better. (Who would have thought?)

And the beer – well, it was everything I expected it to be. Predominantly sweet and malty, with a slightly offensive raw-alcohol nose and flavours of fruit and metal. Is there an Italian word for “meh? If so I would use it here.

I was a little bit confused when Kieran at Regional Wines suggested I buy a beer brewed by Heineken Italia.

I mean – I thought those guys were evil. I thought they only produced that tasteless, fizzy, oft-overpriced stuff that’s taking up far too much space in Auckland bars. Surely they weren’t responsible for something that actually had flavour?

Not that Heineken is necessarily responsible for this beer tasting good (which it does, but I’ll get to that soon). Birra Moretti was an Italian brewery that had been around since 1859, and in 1996 it was acquired by Heineken. I’m not sure how much has changed at Birra Moretti (who now refer to themselves as a brand, rather than a brewery) since Heineken took over, but it would appear that this beer at least hasn’t been bastardized in the process.

Anyway, god, what’s more important than who owns it is what this beer actually tastes like.

This is a lovely, sticky, treat of a beer – just what I felt like after a weekend of crisp Pale Ale’s. It poured a dark, amber colour with a small white head, and actually didn’t give a lot away on the nose. It smelled like malty beer to me, nothing too complex. On the mouth there was so much more though – a rush of sticky molasses, toasty malt, fruit, licorice and candied sugar. It had a real Belgian taste, full and boozy and sweet, but with a relatively zippy, clean finish.

So there you are. So far I’ve learned to not judge a beer by its label, its name, or for having a corporate giant owner. Instead I’ve got to do it the hard way, and in the name of education just Taste Taste Taste!

Much as I’d like all 365 beers on this blog to be lovingly produced by New Zealand craft brewers, there simply aren’t enough to get me through. And that’s why today’s beer is brewed by *rubs toe sheepishly on floor* Carlsberg Italia!

Hey, at least it’s not actually Carlsberg.

I’m pretty tired so I won’t ramble on. The Bock Rossa is an 1877 Dunkler Bock – Dunkler means darker, and a bock is a strong German style lager.

It’s quite sweet and malty with some caramel/toffee flavours, but they disappears pretty quickly and give way to a taste which is kind of… metallic I think. It had quite a light mouthfeel and wasn’t as full-bodied as I’d expected the it to be. I’d like to try other Dunkler Bock’s because something tells me this may not be the best example of the style.

Perhaps my enthusiasm is waning after drinking one too many beers this weekend… Or perhaps it’s all the fantastic New Zealand beers I’ve been getting used to that make this one seem weak (I know I said in an earlier post that I dislike patriotism. This doesn’t count!).